


Freddy versus Freddy

by shulamithbond



Series: Reality X [12]
Category: Five Nights at Freddy's, Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Genre: Beaten at his own Game, Child Murder, Disabled Character of Color, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Horror, Multi, Other, Supernatural Elements, The Unknown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-17 07:51:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2302139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shulamithbond/pseuds/shulamithbond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddy gets persuaded by his estranged daughter to go snoop around Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, so he gets a job there. (Original premise wasn't my idea.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (Prologue)

       The door – or at least, one of the doors – to the boiler room burst open, in the usual, characteristically Maggie-esque way. Freddy Krueger took a deep breath – some habits died hard – and wondered if he had time to grab a beer or some whiskey or something before whatever was about to happen began. _Or I could always pretend I’m not home_.

        But it was too late; Maggie was stalking into the main “room” – not angrily, to Freddy’s surprise, but giddily triumphant. Aoife followed in her wake, looking just about the polar opposite – the young woman’s face looked pale, or at least lighter, than usual; she was using her walking stick; and her movements were shaky, jerking. _She’s gonna lose it. Soon_.

        “I’ve got him!” Maggie crowed, voice reverberating off the pipes so that Aoife flinched hard, and Freddy felt his teeth start to grit themselves. “I’ve finally got that greasy bastard! He thought he could just kick me off the premises and forget about me, but I’ve got _photographic evidence!”_

        Freddy didn’t bother to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “What the hell are you yelling about?”

        Aoife spoke up for the first time. <She suggested we take Hel to a place she knew,> she began darkly, and Freddy wasn’t oblivious to the death glare she was shooting at Maggie. <It’s one of those places that Crys says you see around on Earth for kids, with arcade games and a ballpit and pizza. It was called…> She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to recall the name. <“Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.”>

        “It’s the predecessor to Chuck E. Cheese’s,” Maggie interjected. “It’s a chain; they’re all over the country. But this one franchise, I’m familiar with,” she added darkly. “Really familiar.”

        <We got there, and things seemed fine. Hel seemed to be having fun, and everything. She liked the ball pit,> Aoife continued. <Maggie left our table, but I just assumed she was going to the bathroom or something. Then, a little while later, Hel told me she was going, too.

         <The next thing I know, the manager is leading Maggie back to our table and telling me she was sneaking around in ‘employees-only’ space, and before I can deal with that, there’s this giant scream and Hel comes running back out, crying and with red – with _blood_ – all over her _hands! >_

          One of the smaller pipes behind the three of them burst. _Uh oh_.

        <You _used_ my daughter! > Aoife roared at Maggie now. <She could have di – well, she could have been _injured_ and _traumatized!_ >

         “She was never going to get hurt!” Maggie snapped.

         <How the hell do you know _that? >_

         “Because I was never going to let it happen! And besides, I _know_ this place!” Maggie was nearly yelling herself now, and Freddy watched her take a calming breath.

         “Okay,” she began. “Back when I was doing internships, before I got my degree, I worked at a daycare place for low-income kids down in Bangor for a little while, because they had this great program for out-of-state students. It was one of those things where the university ran the thing and we got to observe the kids…anyway, one day…” She swallowed, and for a minute, she actually looked slightly less than in control, which for Maggie was unusual. “It was my fault.”

         “I said we should take the kids there,” she explained, and Freddy realized belatedly that he was probably supposed to say something comforting and fatherly at this juncture. _Whoops_. “I got a coupon in the mail…just some crappy junk mail, I was going to throw it out when I first saw it… _should’ve_ thrown it out.” She shook her head. “But _no_ , I said we should take the kids for pizza. It would be _fun_ for them, I said. We even had a craft sale to raise some money so they could all have enough arcade tokens.”

         Again, Freddy guessed he should maybe say something. “Want a drink?” He held up the bottle. Sure, it had his germs on it, but hey, they were related. Besides, alcohol sterilized stuff, right?

         “I don’t drink,” she snapped.

         “Since when?”

         “Since I noticed my biological father drinks like a fish and realized it might be genetic,” Maggie replied sourly, shooting a glance at Aoife, as if the girl was supposed to be keeping Freddy on the wagon somehow, despite being just a few months sober herself.

        “I’m dead,” he pointed out. “Not like I got my liver to worry about.”

        “Well, I’m not,” she countered. “So no, I don’t want any booze.”

        <Tell us the rest of the story, Maggie,> Aoife said quietly. Even through her mama bear rage, she looked intrigued.

         Maggie nodded, as if to herself. “We brought the kids in, and everything seemed to be going fine. The animatronics creeped me out a little, but that stuff always does with me, and the kids didn’t seem too bothered. Everyone was having fun.

         “I guess one of them found his way backstage, though. Kids…you know, they get curious. And they wander. And…one of the animatronics was back there. For maintenance, I guess. And somehow…it got turned on.” Maggie paused, and Freddy waited, a little bit interested despite himself.

         Maggie’s voice got quiet. “It _bit_ him.”

         A brief silence followed as Freddy and Aoife both processed this.

        Freddy was the first to break it. “How’d it do that?”

        “I don’t know!”

        “How’d it get turned on?”

        _“I don’t know!”_

        <What happened to him?> asked Aoife. <The child?>

        Maggie turned back to her. “He lived.” She looked down. “A lot of people don’t know this, but…you can live without your frontal lobe.”

        Another pause. The steam whistled in the pipes.

         “We tried to sue them,” Maggie muttered. “They had some bullshit legal mumbo-jumbo for why we couldn’t.

          “But don’t you _get_ it?” she burst out now; Aoife flinched again. “Hela _heals!_ They don’t let the things just wander around anymore, and even if…even if something _did_ happen, Hel would be _fine!_ Nothing hurts her. And they weren’t just going to let me in without a kid. They probably hand my picture out to all the new employees, at this point.” She laughed wearily. “But _I’ve_ got pictures too, now.”

         <I don’t _care_ how safe you _thought_ she was!> Aoife was regaining her mojo now. <You can’t use my daughter as _bait_ just because of her…her _physical abilities!_ You always wanted to protect kids – what about _her? >_

         “Aoife, with the evidence I’ve got, I can put this fucking thing out of business, which means saving a _bunch_ of kids’ lives!”

         < _You had no right to use my child!>_

         Freddy sat back and watched the women go at it. If he’d been forced to give an opinion, he’d probably have sided with Aoife on this one, as a parent himself ( _gross_ ) and because Bob Gray’s kid probably meant at least marginally more to him than some random brats he didn’t know at all. Luckily, though, no one had asked him to weigh in, so he drank, and kept his thoughts to himself.

 

         Aoife came to him after putting Hel to bed back at the house, like he’d known she would. As always, he was only too happy to press his weight down on her and open blossoming red ribbons in the silky skin of her back, until she was crying and coming (and so was he, minus the cry-gasming, of course) under him.

         “You want me to go kick their furry asses?” he growled in her ear as she went limp with satisfaction, her body warm and pulsating with life against his.

         She laughed, sounding tired, and didn’t answer.

 

        He knew he was going to check it out even before he saw the ad in the paper. Anything that pissed off his little Kathy that bad had to be worth a look, and besides, he had to see these kiddie show animatronics that could bite off people’s frontal lobes.

        And now, once he lasted the whole week, he was going to get _paid_ for it.

        _Who knows?_ he thought later, as he prepared for his first shift with some good old liquid courage. _Maybe I’ll even learn a thing or two_.

 

        “Uncle Freddy?”

       _Gah!_ Freddy jerked upright in his chair, knocking over the empty Jack bottle in the process. It clinked to the metal floor. “I was _not_ sleeping!” he growled to the Boiler Room in general, on instinct.

        Hela Gray didn’t respond. She just stared at him – one eye normal (for her species) and yellow, the other a cloudy pale blue; what was the name for that? Hetero-something, right? – and looked bewildered.

        _How did that brat get in here?_ Oh right, the bending-reality thing Bob had used to do sometimes. _How the fuck am I going to childproof a lair against a fucking baby spider-clown-alien-thing? Should she even be able to do this shit yet?_

        “What’s up, kid?” he asked, as calmly as he could.

        “Are you going after the Fazbears?”

        “Those robot fursuit things? Yeah.”

        Her brow puckered. “What’s a ‘fursuit’?”

         _Oh, shit_. “Nothing,” Freddy said quickly. “Anyway, yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do. Tonight. Why?”

        “You have to save the kids,” Hela told him.

        It was Freddy’s turn to look puzzled. “What kids?”

        She was staring at him again, but this time as if she just couldn’t believe how dim he was being. “They stand right behind the Fazbears,” she said at last. “They’re so _scared_ , Uncle Freddy. They’re really hurt.” She looked down at her sneakers, and her right hand started picking at some of the Chüd-scarring on her left. “I know you don’t like kids, but…they really need help.”

         He had no idea what she was talking about, and he resigned himself to not knowing. “Your mom told you you’re not supposed to come here without a grown-up, right?”

        “Yeah, but you’ve got to help those kids” –

        “I’ll see what I can do.” God, he was going to need more booze before this shift started, especially if it was six hours long. “Get back home, _now_ , or your parents are going to kill both of us.”


	2. 12 A.M.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The answering machine message excerpts from the Phone Guy were written by the 5NAF creators and writers, and do not belong to me in any way. Really, none of this belongs to me, I'm just writing it.

         The phone rang. Freddy Krueger groaned. _Where’s the damn phone in here?_ The office desk was piled with paper, used food wrappers, and the usual security guard crap _. Where’s the ringing coming from?_

         He groaned more as the ringing continued, curious about where the phone was, but not actually interested enough to get out of the swivel chair and look for it. “Just _pick up_ already,” he growled at the answering machine, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference.

         “ _Hello? Oh, Hello!”_ the voice on the machine finally started.

         “Fuck you,” Freddy greeted the message-leaver back, just on principle.

        “ _Uh, I wanted to record a message for you to help you get settled in on your first night. Um, I actually worked in that office before you. I'm finishing up my last week now as a matter of fact_.”

         Freddy snorted. “One week to retirement? Seriously? Congratulations on your impending death, asshole.”

        “ _So I know it can be a bit overwhelming, but I'm here to tell you: there's nothing to be worried about. Uh, you'll be fine, so let's just focus on getting you through your first night, okay?”_

         “Nothing to be worried about? You kidding me?” Freddy laughed more and settled back in the chair.

          He tuned out through the legal bullshit the guy read, and briefly came back into it in time to hear the voice say – “… _So remember: these characters hold a special place in the hearts of children, and we need to show them a little respect, right? Okay_ …”

          “Fuck you,” Freddy told him again. “And fuck those fucking robot furries, too.” _How much are they paying this guy to spew this crap?_

          He tuned out more, just barely catching something about the “Bite of 1987” and a frontal lobe, which was probably that thing Maggie had been talking about (although according to Aoife, it wasn’t actually that abnormal for a brain to survive without a frontal lobe, because apparently human brains evolved in layers, with all the important “living” stuff like breathing down toward the bottom, and the frontal lobe just in charge of stuff like impulse control and decision-making. Or some such nerd crap).

          He surfaced just in time to hear the guy say, “ _Uh, the only parts of you that would likely see the light of day again would be your eyeballs and teeth that would pop out the front of the mask…Yeah, they don't tell you these things when you sign up_.”

         “No shit,” Freddy sniggered. Not that he could actually complain; as it was, at the very least he’d get some new material out of this place.

         “ _But hey; first day should be a breeze. I'll chat with you tomorrow, uh, check those cameras, and remember to close the doors only if absolutely necessary. Gotta conserve power. Alright. Good night_.”

         The machine went dead.


	3. 1 A.M.

          Freddy flicked through the cameras. He wasn’t bored; he’d been _bored_ about a half hour ago.

         Everybody was in place. Nobody was doing anything. _Why do I even have to be here?_

         He brought the stage camera back up, and blinked.

         _How many of them are there again? Three, right?_

         The one standing at the front of the group was gone.

  

         He could just about hear the metallic footfalls coming down the corridor, still sounding pretty distant. Freddy held off on slamming the door. _I want to see this ugly fucker._

         What would happen if he just wrecked the thing? It wasn’t like he was worried about actually dying. _Why don’t I just find ‘em all and take ‘em all apart for scraps while I’m at it?_

         That wasn’t such a bad idea. It would stop some of Maggie’s bitching, wouldn’t it? Maybe there were some tools here that he could use? Where did they keep their maintenance stuff? Some of the desk drawers were unlocked, so Freddy started to rifle through them. He didn’t find any tools, but he did find a booklet marked _Employee Handbook_ and spattered with some rusty red-brown stains. Which meant some loser had been reading it, presumably looking for survival tips, right before he got offed. Well, maybe he’d had a good reason for doing that.

         Freddy opened the booklet, skipped to the chapter marked “Animatronics,” and read: _Fazbear Entertainment considers any and all acts of employee tampering with animatronics to be an act of vandalism as well as insubordination. As such, any act of tampering with any Fazbear franchise animatronic device, including but not limited to Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken, or Foxy the Pirate Fox, is punishable by immediate termination without pay, as well as possible civil or criminal charges_.

         Freddy couldn’t have given less of a shit about “civil or criminal charges,” except that hypothetically, jail time would mean free food and lots of sleeping criminals and guards every night (which was a nice thought, but a moot point since he was _never going to set foot in another fucking jail ever again_ ), but “termination without pay”… _nah, fuck that. I want my damn money_.

         He looked up, and did admittedly give a small jump as he noticed the huge, bruise-purple face and wide, blank eyes looming in the doorway. It was making a weird kind of groaning sound, almost a human noise. He sighed.

         “Okay, you win,” he told the thing, slamming down the door in its face. “Tell your friends they get one more night. But if you tell anyone, you’re scrap metal, get it?”

         Then he turned.

          _And the thing was in his face_ ; the yellow head covered in plastic feathers; the yawning, toothy beak – _does it have extra teeth back there, in its fucking throat?_ – the bugged-out dead eyes; and it was _screaming_ , a harsh metallic shriek.

         Freddy brought the glove up and punctured the head’s casing, ripping off part of it to expose the wires underneath, even as metal hands gripped his neck and started to drag him toward the office door. Freddy’s feet kicked uselessly, unable to get purchase, and the angle was wrong for his glove to do any further damage. Finally, he was able to pry the robotic fingers off his throat. The thing continued on for a second, as if it hadn’t realized it wasn’t holding onto him anymore, and Freddy took the opportunity to scramble back into the office and slam down the door.

        It watched him for a while afterward, through the window. He made a mental note to go out after his shift ended and patch up its head so he wouldn’t get canned for tampering or whatever it was.

        He didn’t open the doors again.


	4. 2 A.M.

         The lights flickered, and Freddy remembered about the power. He looked down at the little battery icon at the corner of the camera screen.

         The power was at 7%.

         _And when it conks out, both doors open, right?_

         He looked at the clock. A little less than four hours left before his shift was over.

         Okay, enough of this. _Sorry, Kathy, this was fun and all, but Daddy’s going back to haunting brats’ dreams, where he belongs, money or no money. I can always take it out of the register later_. Freddy focused and tried to return to the dreamworld.

         Nothing happened. _What the fuck?_

         He tried again. When he opened his eyes, the security office stubbornly continued to be there.

         Rage spiked. _Why the hell can’t I get out of here?_

         The camera screen said the power was now at 5%.

 

         Freddy hated to hide like one of the brats he’d used to hunt, but as the power wound down to 0%, he didn’t see any other option. If he couldn’t get back to the dreamworld in here, who knew what else might be capable of happening to him? Who knew; he might even be able to _die_ here. And it had been hard enough to fight off that duck thing.

         It wasn’t that he was _scared_ , of course. He was just feeling lazy tonight; wasn’t in the mood to bust up any more of them if he could help it.

         He crouched under the desk as the lights went out, and he heard the doors slide up.

         He heard it before he saw it, which wasn’t surprising; it was close, but the desk was blocking his view of both doorways. Still, he could hear the tinny music, echoing faintly in the silence of the building. Freddy Fazbear’s music, apparently. According to the manual.

         The music stopped, and after what felt like another hour of silence, Freddy heard something begin to lumber into the room.

         It sounded kind of big.

         As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could just about make out a looming black shape standing in front of the place where the now-empty swivel chair sat. Inasmuch as an indistinct shape could seem to have any emotional state, it seemed…confused.

         What was the pussy on the answering machine’s story for this? Some kind of “free-roaming mode”? _Yeah, that’s bullshit_.

         _The damn thing’s looking for me_. _It knows I’m here somewhere_.

         He couldn’t stay here, not even for the rest of the shift. He wasn’t going to just sit and wait for the fuckers to get him, without even the doors, and he wasn’t going to spend three hours and change hiding under that desk like one of his victims.

         Eventually, the other Freddy – from what he’d heard about the thing, this was probably the Freddy one – seemed to get the message that tonight’s security guard was not where he was supposed to be, and Freddy watched him lumber out through the opposite doorway. He waited until the metallic steps faded from earshot before easing quietly out from under the desk, and slipping out the door behind him.


	5. 3 A.M.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As with the phone call, I didn't write the content of the newspaper clippings. I own nothing here.

         Out in the hall, the first thing Freddy saw was a fire door. He tried it without much optimism; _locked_.

          His gaze drifted up to the wall for no particular reason, and something caught his eye – a bulletin board full of newspaper clippings about Fazbear’s. Freddy’s immediate instinct was not to care, but maybe they were useful.

          With one ear trained on the hallway ahead, Freddy began to read. _Local pizzeria Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza has been threatened again with shutdown by the health department over reports of a foul odor coming from the much loved Animal mascots…Police were contacted when parents reportedly noticed what appeared to be blood and mucus around the eyes and mouths of the mascots. One parent likened them to ‘Reanimated Carcasses’._

          Bored, Freddy skimmed down. _Two local children were reportedly lured into a back room during the late hours of operation at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza on the night of June 26 th…video surveillance identified the man responsible and led to his capture the following morning…five children are now linked to the incident at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, where a man dressed as a cartoon mascot lured them into a back room…_

         And that was pretty weird right there, because Freddy could at least vaguely remember that legal jargon the guy on the phone had read him during the obscenely long message, and these didn’t seem like the kind of people who’d hand over video footage to convict some poor bastard if it meant their restaurant looking bad, which it clearly would and had. These weren’t people who handed over evidence; these were people who got their carpets replaced and probably bleached everything in sight.

         So they'd maybe set the guy up. But then who were they protecting? 

         How would somebody even get into one of those damn suits? The guy on the phone had said they had all those mechanisms and crossbeams and shit inside them. Okay, sure, maybe this guy had used a different kind of mascot suit than the animatronic suits they had here. Who could even tell? The article didn’t say what kind he used, and there was no picture.

         _Speaking of those suits_ …Freddy looked down the hall and listened hard, but was pretty sure there were only the usual sounds for this place at night; settling, cooling electronics and very distant metallic steps.

         People got so damn uptight about kids. Sure, at this point in his existence Freddy could just about understand that for certain, _individual_ kids, like Kathy and Crys and even Hel for instance, but not “kids” as a collective group. People thought kids were so damn innocent. Freddy had seen enough of them, and remembered enough from his own childhood, to know they were mostly just as rotten as their parents.

         But maybe this poor schmuck _had_ done what they said he did. That meant this was probably a haunting-type situation, right? Maybe those were the kids Hel had seen standing behind the robots; the ghosts of the murdered kids. It would explain why the things seemed to have a mind of their own.

         _A retired child killer ~~trapped~~ holed up in an abandoned building with the vengeful ghosts of brats who were murdered by a child killer. Not exactly ideal._

         He turned back to the wall with the newspaper clippings, and blinked. The wall was different now – older and weathered-looking, with the paint chipping off and graffiti scrawled over it in red inky-looking stuff.

           ** _IT’S ME_** , read the graffiti.

        “ _What_ the fuck,” Freddy breathed, shaking his head, and turned back down the corridor.

 

        There was something about walking down the hall, out in the open, that seemed like a bad idea, and when he looked back on it, that sense was probably what had sent Freddy into the first unlocked door he found, which read EMPLOYEES ONLY.

        The dim light from the hallway shone into the darkened room as he peered around. At first, he had to blink, and then try to look again. _What the fuck am I even looking at here?_

        The room was completely unfamiliar; he didn’t remember it from any of the security cameras. Given that and the “employees only” entry policy, it occurred to Freddy that this might be the kitchen. _Might_ be. It was impossible to be sure.

        The room seemed to be filled with a great mass of…something. Freddy couldn’t identify it, especially in the near-dark. It did look vaguely familiar – after a few minutes of staring, he realized it reminded him of cool whip, or maybe shaving cream, or some kind of foam. It was piled up on every surface, from the floors to what might have been counters or shelves.

        Come to think of it, it looked slimier than foam. Thicker, too.

        Freddy didn’t really want to get any closer to the stuff, but he was pretty sure he could hear metallic footfalls close behind him in the hall. He stepped through and shut the door tight behind him, plunging the room into darkness.

        The stuff was much thicker and slimier than any foam Freddy had ever come across, and the smell was ranker; organic and sickly. It made fleshy noises as his feet slipped and sank into it, and felt cold and clammy where he touched it.

        _This might be human skin. Or meat, or something. Come on, you had to expect that shit in a place like this_. Freddy grimaced. The stuff looked kind of like ground beef and smelled like something was rotting. _Yep, it’s probably human meat._

        His foot brushed something harder, although brittle and shell-like, in the mess, and Freddy bent down carefully and felt for it. It was round, and small, maybe a little bigger than a softball in his hand, and again, something about it felt familiar.

        Freddy made his way toward the glow from the crack under the door, and listened. He couldn’t hear any footsteps; the hall sounded quiet. Slowly, he opened the kitchen door a crack, and let the light fall on the round thing in his hand.

        It was a skull. A smallish one.

         Freddy tried to breathe – through his mouth – out of habit mostly, as the feeling from the security booth came over him again. That feeling of not wanting to just sit there and wait for them to get you.

         He tossed the skull back into its pile of ground, dead meat, and slipped out the door and down the hall.


	6. 4 A.M.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a short chapter, I know, but the next one is probably going to be pretty long, since I think it's going to pretty much tie everything up, as much as that's going to happen in this fic at least.

         The curtained-off area loomed up ahead of Freddy abruptly, like some kind of last-minute addition to the overall setup that didn’t really fit. It was located toward the back of the building, as far as he understood the floor plan, and it seemed dusty here, like whoever swept this place hardly ever bothered to get back here. It was hard to see in the dark, but he thought it might be closed. A sign in front of it – he could just about make it out – said SORRY! OUT OF ORDER. He thought he could see some cobwebs clinging to the sign.

         Freddy blinked. Had the curtain been cracked open like that before? Just a hair; just enough to see a little sliver of the absolute blackness behind it?

         It was hard to tell if that sliver was growing wider; he thought his eyes might just be playing tricks on him.

         The _thing_ launched itself at him before he even had time to react, and before Freddy knew it he was pinned to the linoleum by the sheer force of the attack. The sharp metal teeth ripped at his clothes and his skin. Pain – _actual pain _– made him see red behind his eyes, and he could feel wetness on his sweater, and running down his collarbone. _This thing’s actually making me bleed?_

         He managed to pull the thing off him slightly, and held it at arm’s length for a few seconds. _What is that? Some kind of fucking coyote?_

          It was shrieking like the others, and its limbs pumped madly as it tried to break out of his grip, while its wicked-looking jaws continued to gnash, some of Freddy’s blood dribbling from them at the corners. The jaw was dislocated – maybe due to frontal-lobe-chomping – and the movements seemed more jerking and less efficient than Freddy Fazbear or the duck’s movements had. Its hair was also mangy, and missing in patches all over its casing. Clearly this one didn’t get much maintenance.

        The rage crashed over him suddenly, and so completely that at first Freddy thought it was his own. Disjointed thoughts – if they could even be called thoughts; he could barely understand them – filled his mind.

         _Broken – watching – laughing – forgotten – **junk** – NOT JUNK – NOT  **BROKEN** –_

         _And those kids. Those kids who didn’t even watch until they were bored with the games and the food and the others…those kids who used to laugh and touch and **climb** –_

         Even through the fear – okay, maybe there was a little bit of fear; it was just a natural, physical response; if he could still feel rage, it only made sense he’d be able to get a little scared sometimes too – Freddy couldn’t help but snort. “Fuckin’ brats,” he croaked, almost unable to hear himself over the screeching. “Feel y’there, Wile-E.”

         The thing lunged at him again, managing to get its teeth against his neck again and _scrape_ as he brought his glove up and through its torso. He wedged his knives into the hinge of the jaw and twisted until the rest of it tore off with a metallic shriek. He plunged his blades into the head, and through the skin of the glove, his fingers brushed some wires that felt decidedly important. He pulled them until they snapped free.

         Freddy watched the mutt sag and the glow leave its eyes, as it crumbled to the floor in a heap of rusty, rotten-smelling metal and cheap fake fur. Absently, he lifted a hand up to the cut on his throat.

         He hadn’t gotten any flashes of thoughts or personality or anything from the duck when it had touched him. He wondered vaguely what that was about. The wound on his neck also seemed to be closing itself, so maybe he couldn’t die here after all.

         But _that_ – whatever he’d seen; whatever he’d felt – _that_ wasn’t the soul of some dead brat. That was something _else_. It hadn’t even really felt human, although he was prepared to be wrong about that, since human minds came in almost every size and shape. But there hadn’t been words, only feelings and sometimes images that were hard to separate and make sense out of. _What the hell kind of ghost was haunting that thing?_

        He left the body there as, he figured, an example to the others. He happened to glance back at the sign while he was leaving; for a second, he could have sworn it now said **_IT’S ME_**. 


	7. 5 A.M.

         He couldn’t see the bear from here, but he could hear him coming along down the corridor. The damn song might be playing, but louder were the footsteps, like jackboots on the tiles. Freddy scanned the hallway ahead for open doors, and noticed one.

         The first thing that hit him was the smell. It really was the way the whole place smelled to some extent, but it was so much thicker here; it couldn’t be ignored or covered up with cooking pizza or air fresheners. It stank of old blood and something rotten, with undertones of vomit and piss. It wasn’t sickening, not to someone like Freddy, but it was strong, and pervasive, as if this place had never been aired out or cleaned properly. As if they’d been storing dead bodies in here, and just left them to rot.

         Which, come to think of it, they probably had.

         It was darker in here, but the emergency glow from the hall lit the very edges of things, hinting at shapes in the gloom. At first, Freddy nearly jumped; _they’re here_. The animatronics had somehow been waiting for him.

         But they didn’t move or make any sound, and in their dead metal eyes, he couldn’t see any of the light that had shone out through Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy’s eyes before. Clearly, these were the spare animatronic parts: the suits, the endoskeletons, the masks. This was where they took people to stuff them into the costumes. No wonder it reeked of decomposition.

        One of the suits was leaking blood from the eye sockets; it had dried now, into the fur of the face in long streaks, as if the suit was crying. Maybe this had been the suit Hel had found. Sure enough, when Freddy peered closer, he could see that its eyeballs were too small for the sockets, and discolored, yellowish and wet-looking. The teeth that protruded from the snout of the mask looked too small, too blunt, too realistic, and too out-of-place to belong there.

        His foot crunched something on the floor; he bent down gingerly to look.

        It was a very small-looking bone. He wasn’t sure what kind. He left it where it was, and edged away from it.

        Something in the corner of his eye caught Freddy’s attention, and he turned toward the back wall. Written in what was probably blood, but too dark to be fresh, were the words **_THEY WILL KNOW THE JOY OF CREATION_**.

         _Creation_. In this back room, where all the parts were. Where _they_ got created.

         “You’re not alive,” Freddy croaked at the silent, frozen suits; the tranquil, disembodied faces; the twisted, sleeping endoskeletons. “You never were alive to begin with.” He wasn’t sure why he said it.

         And then he realized that outside, in the hall, the distant thud of the footsteps had stopped. Silence had reigned, until he had broken it.

         Behind him, that tinny, familiar rendition of “Les Toreadors” started to play.

 

         Freddy turned toward the glowing eyes, and watched the bear lumber toward him. Even in the gloom, he could just about see bloody handprints on its head, on either side of its snout. As if someone had tried – with a bleeding grip – to shove it away. He saw the teeth in the jaws; tombstone-shaped and metallic, rusting slightly – or was it dried blood, caked down at the gums? He saw the paws reaching out for him.

         Freddy may or may not have let out a yell – he’d rather burn alive again than admit it – and plunged his glove into the thing’s enormous torso.

         The paws seized him, claws digging into his shoulders hard enough to draw blood – _why the hell does a kids’ animatronic have sharp teeth and claws?_ – as Freddy tried to wrench his glove back out of the suit’s casing. It was stuck, and sparks flickered around the hole as the metal of the blades screeched against the metal of the suit.

         The paws began to lift Freddy toward the bear’s waiting steel jaws, emergency lights and sparks glinting off its teeth. Tugging as hard as he could, Freddy managed to wrench his glove free, and he plunged it between the thing’s jaws and down its throat as far as he could reach. He hissed as Freddy Fazbear’s teeth dug into his arm, feeling as if they were sinking in down to the bone.

        The bear’s paws dropped him and Freddy couldn’t quite stifle a growl of pain as he hung from the animatronic by his glove arm, which felt weakened, probably by the shoulder wound from its claws. He could feel every tooth that was skewering his arm, and he could feel them dragging at the holes in his skin as gravity pulled his body toward the floor. He saw something dark and hot trickling down his arm, only a few drops at first, but rapidly increasing as he worked his blades as far down the throat as he could, scratching at whatever surfaces he felt.

        _The thing was bleeding_. A feral grin spread across Freddy’s face. True, animatronics shouldn’t be able to bleed, but he was so past caring about that right now. _I’m making the son of a bitch bleed_.

         Freddy grabbed the bear’s ear and head awkwardly, trying not to slide down farther. As blood continued to flood from Fazbear’s mouth, Freddy managed to rip his arm out of its jaws, growling as the teeth caught momentarily in his flesh. He raised the glove once again and tore through Fazbear’s face, exposing the cruel-looking, bug-eyed endoskeleton beneath, before driving his blades into that and twisting. He jolted as a spark from the animatronic traveled up his arm and shocked him, but willed himself to keep tearing it apart.

         He felt something as he held onto Fazbear, one hand shoved into its circuitry, and it made him shiver. It was hard to describe, except to compare it to other things that seemed sort of similar, but not exactly like it.

         Like darkness. Or the ocean, or the empty sky. A deep cavern under the ground, like the one he’d found with Kathy that one time they’d gone after the Tall Man. This was a little bit like the Tall Man, in fact.

          This was like Bob “Pennywise” Gray had been. _Old_. Very, very _old_.

          With another spark, Freddy jolted back into the moment as Fazbear’s struggles slowed, and then ceased, and he jumped down as he felt the mechanical legs start to fold under his and Fazbear’s combined dead weight.

         As he knelt over the cooling animatronic, Freddy felt as if he was just waking up from a dream; some kind of fog had cleared from his head. Everything felt _realer_ – the dim emergency lights, distant and ponderous footsteps up and down the halls, the artificial fur under his knees and hand, and the smells of rot, heated metal and circuits. Freddy drew a deep breath, even knowing he didn’t need it. He wanted to be outside. He wanted a victim. He wanted a drink.

         He’d been _scared_ he could die in this place. Why had he been afraid of that? When that duck thing had tried to wring his neck, he’d barely even felt it. He’d freaked out, sure, but it had been purely emotional. _It was all in my head_. Same with that fox thing. He’d healed right away. He’d been scared, but that was it.

         Why had he tried to avoid these things? Because if they found him, they’d stuff him into one of those suits. So what? He wouldn’t _die_. He’d just cut his way out again. Why had he thought he had to be afraid here? Something had been clouding his mind, messing with his head.

         **_IT’S ME_**. The words flashed across his eyes like blinking spots after staring into a bright light, and Freddy growled in annoyance. He blinked hard and screwed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, Freddy Fazbear stood before him once more.

         It was a Freddy suit, but it was different – the fur was gold, and matted with blood, and the suit had a hollowed-out look to it. As Freddy continued to look at it, it came to him that the thing felt familiar.

         It brought him back to his past, back to Elm Street.

         _It’s made of souls. The souls of the dead brats, the soul of the guy who worked here before me, the souls of all the poor bastards who died before him. Everything that happened here, never left_.

         But there was something else under them all, too. Freddy thought he could almost glimpse it, but it skated away whenever he tried to look. All he could tell was that something had been here before everything started dying – this place hadn’t started killing on its own. Unless this thing and this place were one and the same.

         And now it was bright, blinding white-hot, and he could feel the light trying to pull him in like an ocean current sucking at his feet. It wanted him, too; it thought it could eat him like it had eaten those kids. Freddy found himself baring his teeth in a snarl as he raised his glove at Golden Freddy. This new thing might not even really be there – it might be a hallucination, or this place playing another trick on him – but whatever it was, he was going to kill it real good.

         He could feel the heat radiating off it, almost like hot breath, and he could smell the rankness of the blood soaking the golden fur, and the almost-blue glow in the eyes. He could almost hear the voices of the children, the old security guard, and all the other nameless victims it had snagged over the years.

         It brought a wickedly-clawed, golden paw up to Freddy’s face.

          And then it spoke, in a voice he hadn’t heard since he was twelve years old. Twelve years old and hiding down in the cellar, hoping that maybe tonight, Underwood would just forget about him and pass out already…

         _“Time to take your medicine, boy,”_ Golden Freddy growled.

         Freddy felt a cold place open in his stomach. For a second, it got harder to breathe again.

         But only for a second. Besides, he didn’t need to breathe. Not anymore.

         _Kill it. Kill it real good_.

         “Fuck you,” Freddy shot back. “Those aren’t claws. _These_ are claws.”

          And he sank his own blades into its gut.

          The thing emitted a screech that was half scraping metal, half human-sounding shriek of terror, as Freddy sliced his knives up its body, slitting it lengthwise to the neck as it struggled and screamed. Ethereal wisps of what looked like translucent mist flowed out of Golden Freddy’s body, and Freddy grinned, willing them into himself. The wails of the unquiet spirits were music to his ears, and he felt himself getting stronger with each one. It had been years since he’d been able to absorb so many souls, not since leaving Springwood.

          “You know I’ve had to slice up three of your goddamn furries tonight, right?” he snarled at the golden Freddy suit, which was still hemorrhaging souls. “That means I don’t even get any fucking _money_ for this. Because of _you!”_

         He slashed off one deflated furry arm and paw – then two – and forced his hands around its neck, pushing it down toward the floor. “This is what a _real_ demon looks like, you son of a bitch.” He squeezed its neck harder, not caring that since it didn’t breathe – since it wasn’t alive – choking it shouldn’t have any effect. “You should never have fucked with me, _or any of my kids!”_

         He looked down at the empty suit, now dark and motionless, lying in a heap on the floor. Somehow, presumably through a combination of sheer rage and absorbing its energy, he’d been able to kill it. _Whatever it was_.

         He was almost expecting the building to start trembling, crumbling like the physical embodiment of cliché that it was, as the walls and floors covered themselves with a spidery latticework of cracks. Freddy took the hint, before the floor opened up into Hell or something stupid like that, and ran for the front doors. It occurred to him belatedly that the rabbit was still walking around, and the duck might be, too, but he passed them both down one of the halls, motionless and with the light fully gone out of both their eyes.

         Somehow he managed to reach the main arcade area, and from there the front doors, but Freddy didn’t care enough to question it. He tried the doors, and found them both – despite everything – still locked.

         He turned and glanced back at the restaurant. What he saw wasn’t so much an implosion as it was a tide of shadows; an enormous wave; lengthening, moving, and coming toward him at what looked like full speed. Freddy wasn’t sure what would happen if it touched him, but it would probably be pretty interesting. He debated just staying where he was and finding out.

          But if that thing was dead, then maybe…

         A slow grin spread over Freddy’s face. “See ya,” he told the shadows, and disappeared.


	8. (Epilogue)

       The fire in the living room fireplace of the Hela-parents’ house gave a crackle, as Aoife Force-lifted another log into it. She had finished putting Hela to sleep an hour or two ago, before finally letting Freddy tell her and Maggie about destroying Freddy Fazbear’s.

         “So, yeah.” Freddy took another swig of beer. “I got out, and the place came crashing down behind me. When I looked back at it, nothing was standing. Couldn’t even find a safe or whatever was left of the cash register, so I could take my pay out. Not a damn thing left except rubble.”

         “But what exactly was attacking people?” asked Maggie. “Are you telling me it was just _ghosts?”_ She looked disappointed.

         “Sort of. I mean, I don’t know.” Freddy took another drink. “I don’t trust that company as far as I can throw ‘em, and it looks like they can cover up a death. And ghosts can’t make everyone around ‘em forget what they did long enough for a place like that to stay in business like it did…”

          <Bob used to be able to do that,> Aoife interjected.

          “Right, which is why…I gotta wonder. Especially when Aoife told me what the internet thinks the Fifth Night’s message means.” Apparently, every night had its own message in the video game that was based on the place, like the one Freddy had heard, and the fifth night's message was garbled. Freddy didn't even know anymore.

          <It’s allegedly an excerpt from _Autobiography of a Yogi_ by Paramhansa Yogananda, > Aoife explained. <It basically talks about how metal can have a life force of its own. Which makes sense in Craft terms, since metal comes from the earth, and especially in the case of animatronics, which take on an appearance of life. We see it with droids back home sometimes. They take on aspects of sentience, or near-sentience. When you build the shape, once in a while, you can get the substance after all. "They will know the joy of creation." That's one of the few phrases they could pick out.>

         Something stirred in Freddy's memory. "They had that written on the wall backstage, in the room with all the spare parts."

        Aoife nodded and looked pensive for a few seconds. <Anyway, the theory seems especially applicable to the Fazbear animatronics, because small children probably believed they were real. The way you do, when you’re really little. Everything seems alive.>

         “So there’s that,” agreed Freddy. “And between that, and…well, like, what if there was an entity – like Bob, maybe – that sort of mixed themselves with the animatronics and the restaurant somehow? Like they needed someplace to live, or some kind of body, so they took on that?”

         “So in short,” Maggie summed up slowly, “You don’t know if the missing children’s ghosts caused everything the animatronics did, or if the animatronics killed the kids and made the ghosts.”

          “Yep.” Freddy shrugged. “I figure we probably never will.”

          “And you’re _okay_ with that?” Maggie looked indignant. “You’re just going to _accept_ it?”

          “Hey, if there’s one thing living here teaches you,” Freddy retorted, “It’s that there’s not always clear answers for stuff. There’s not always any answers at all. The world is big and weird.” He shrugged again, as beside him, Aoife nodded the truth of his statement. “Sometimes, stuff just _is_. And there’s nothing you can do except try to be ready for it, when it comes for you.”


End file.
